


The Kids from the Skids

by nimmieamee (orphan_account)



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Cows, F/M, Fireplaces, fake dinner parties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-29 10:07:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12628656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/nimmieamee
Summary: A gang, a desperate blonde, a showdown in the cafeteria. An incursion on the North Side, a flight to a farm, and two people reconciling themselves to gloom and doom.It's really just another night in Riverdale.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This contains too many references and about as much tonal whiplash as the show.

You couldn't keep the South Side down forever. That was what old Hank Bloom always said. He'd know, too. He lived in the Westfall Luxury Apartments down by the quarry, and those apartments had once been meant to take down the South Side.

They'd been built by the Lodges in the 1980s. The Lodges had planned to buy the old town candy shop, raze it, obliterate the South Side through aggressive condominium development, and profit. The profit part had worked. So had the destruction of the candy shop. Every beautiful mahogany counter and beveled glass inch of it was gone now, though Sweet Pea's mother, who'd worked there, could describe it down to the last detail. 

What hadn't worked for the Lodges was doing away with the South Side. It had taken only one economic recession to flush out all the new money hopefuls, bankrupt the owners the Lodges had sold the place to, and return it to the South Siders. Blighted and hideous now, all the cheap building materials rotting in the humid stink of the quarry. But theirs again.

"Entropy," said Toni, when old Hank Bloom laid this all out.

"Well, let's show little boy Jones what that looks like," Sweet Pea said. Sweet Pea was in a foul mood. He scowled. Toni thought he was pretending that his twisted reflection in the deep green quarry water was the face of Jughead Jones. She pretended not to notice his pretending.

"Why?" said Toni. "The Ghoulies'll do it for us. All we have to do is stay out of it."

"Not help him," put in Fangs, as much to catch up as to clarify.

"I'm not asking for blood brothers," Sweet Pea said. "I'm not asking to cuddle with him at night, to time-share a puppy, to be his emergency contact in case of life-threatening hospitalization--"

"Okay, increasingly specific scenarios," said Toni.

"What I want is a little respect for what we've done for him. Nobody just gets invited in, but we invited him. But he's too good for the invite."

"Not so much like his father," said old Hank Bloom.

"And I was real casual," Sweet Pea continued, in an ugly tone. "Didn't talk about earning his stripes--"

"Okay. A consideration," Toni said carefully. "He's not casual."

"What?"

"He's like us," Toni said. "South Side in his thinking. Either you're in or you're out. Either you are one of his closest friends or no friend at all. If there's no instant familiarity, no spark, it's not worth trying."

"Like this," Fangs said, locking his fists together into one mega-fist. "Or this." 

He pulled his hands apart.

"A lot like his father," sighed old Hank Bloom.

"I mean, I'm not saying I wouldn't take him back if he came crawling -- which he will," Sweet Pea pointed out. "I would take him back. I'm a flexible guy."

"He's not. My whole point," Toni said.

"But, you know, no retaliation for anything the Ghoulies do to him until he's in," said Sweet Pea. "They can do what they want until he agrees he's in. That's the line."

"I'm going try to be in with him, not out," said Toni. "You know me. Either I like you, or you're not worth my time. I'm not proud of it, but it has to be, you know, dark flannel gang thug life crossed with that _Steel Magnolias_ vibe. BFFs, or I'm going to hate him."

"He has a girlfriend," Fangs put in. It was unclear whether he was talking to Sweet Pea or to Toni.

"Handsome like his father," sighed old Hank Bloom.

"And," Toni said, ignoring this, "I can get him in with the Serpents. I think I can make it happen." 

"If you can't, who can?" Tall Boy put in now.

He was regarding them from his battered lawn chair on Hank Bloom's patio. He put his beer down on the cracked asphalt. The dusty, chiseled slopes of the quarry crowded gently behind him, for background effect. 

"We got no FP," he said, firm. "We ain't gonna _get_ no FP."

They all considered this. FP was going down for the whole gang, and so it was well-understood that the North Side legal system wouldn't go easy on him.

"He should have called me to dump that damn body," said Sweet Pea. "The river. Please. You've gotta take it out to one of those sap pools in Fox Forest and let it mummify. Remember, Fangs, like with the gerbil? After two days we couldn't even recognize the body."

"FP didn't think like that. Wasn't clever like his boy," sighed old Hank Bloom, inverting things.

"I don't know about clever," said Tall Boy.

"Imaginative," said Toni. "A little fragile. Booksmart. Intuitive. Determined. Useful." 

Now she was looking at the ugly green quarry water, seeing both herself and Jughead Jones.

"I wish we'd just buried my gerbil like normal people," Fangs said. 

"I don't know about smart," Tall Boy repeated. "But useful. Yeah. We ain't got no FP, so we've got a vacuum. And it ain't gonna look good to the Ghoulies, to the boys from Montreal, if we get turned down by some kid. We gotta bind him to the South Side. It's the optics. I put Peabody on it, but who knows--"

"I'll get him in," Toni said confidently.

"We'll retaliate against the Ghoulies for sure," said Sweet Pea, "but I'm not gonna hold his hand or adopt a kitten or take him to some lake house for a romantic weekend--"

"Very specific," Fangs said now, catching Toni's eye.

"Hard to keep the South Side down," noted old Hank Bloom. 

"Fine. Let's make a dark lord, boys," Toni said. "Out of, I don't know, one of the cute sensitive dweebs from _Dead Poets Society._ "

"He writes poetry?" Fangs said. "FP said it was just a murder book."

"He's got potential," said Tall Boy. "Think of this as us investing in it. He'll thank us someday, when his old man's still in jail and he's got a crew."

"South Side always rises," said old Hank Bloom. "Rises if it's in him. Hard to keep it down."

Sweet Pea abruptly kicked a nearby rock into the water. "I expect his loyalty. Total. Absolute."

"Swift turnaround," Toni said, rolling her eyes. "But I get it. Casual doesn't work for me either."

The quarry continued to crowd around them. The snakes continued the conversation in somewhat useless loops for a few more rounds. They were all in agreement. New information wasn't strictly necessary. But they wanted to run it a few more times until it felt right. That was the thing about a gang -- get enough people to say something enough times, and it would start to just feel right.


	2. Chapter 2

Nobody had any chill about the Jughead Jones plot, nor did they want to, since chill was for people who weren't classified as emotionally disturbed by the school counselor. So after Jones tried to talk Fangs out of getting his stripes, Sweet Pea made sure to tell Jones that his best friend was a ginger psychopath. Toni, meanwhile, pointed out that if anything happened to his Sandra Dee girlfriend while she was on the South Side, every innocent South Sider would end up paying for it.

"I'm thinking of those Alice Cooper headlines," she said, holding her hands out in front of her and making a swoopy motion. "South Sider Assaults My Baby, Time To Kill Them All."

"She wouldn't--" Jughead began.

Stopped. Considered it.

"Okay," he allowed grudgingly. "She would. But that's an obscenely long headline."

"'Scuse me, Truman Capote," Toni said, shrugging. "You're the editor-in-chief. I just do the pretty pictures."

So then the night Fangs did get his stripes, after some North Side weaklings showed up at the hospital and lied about what happened, after the sheriff raided the Whyte Wyrm claiming that they'd tried to kill a National Honors Junior Scientist, after Sweet Pea and Fangs and all the others got a _colossal_ chewing out from Peabody and Tall Boy down at the tattoo parlor--

Fangs walked home, torn between an adrenaline rush and a deep sense of foreboding.

The road was gloomy until he hit the center of town, the dividing point between North and South, and then it turned into less of a road and more of a bluish lane. Misty hedges on the North Side, with big unfriendly houses beyond. This was the straightest shot to his part of the South Side or he wouldn't take it, but he wished he had his bike. Sweet Pea had said no bikes for the rumble. If you took your bike into the North Side and started something, you risked leaving it there and getting it impounded or something. So he had to walk this odd uneasy stretch on his own.

When he got to the bus stop, he found a girl.

She was a North Sider. You could always tell by the crisp brightness of their skin, the glossiness of their hair. They looked healthier. They looked wholesome. That was part of what made Jughead Jones so irrevocably the South Side's -- he was tired and brittle instead of shiny and good. 

This one looked shiny and good, even while sitting hunched on the bus station bench. Fangs turned up his collar and walked past her, ignoring her sobs. In the current political climate, it really didn't do to mix with North Siders. Otherwise maybe he would have offered her a tissue. Or at least a gas station receipt, which was what he actually had on hand. But she was clearly North and he was clearly South, so she’d probably say he’d pulled a gun on her even though it was her side that was doing that. 

"Wait,” she said. 

“Nope,” said Fangs. 

“ _Wait_.”

There was something steely buried in the choked-up voice, and it was that steel that set off warning bells. Not Black Hood warning bells. Sandra Dee warning bells. Fangs didn’t even know how he knew. He just did. 

She was up and brushing away her tears. She had big liquidy good girl eyes and all-American blonde hair. Fangs thought about how if you punched a guy like the junior scientist maybe you might get the sheriff on your back, and that was bad enough, but if you so much as breathed wrong at a girl like this then the whole North Side would be after your blood. 

No wonder she put Toni on edge. She put him on edge. Snakes, he thought distantly, had to be scared of something. He just never thought they’d be scared of a newspaper headline:

SOUTH SIDE SERPENT MADE ADVANCES TOWARDS OUR BABY

“Buzz off,” he said, and stepped around her, hands up. “I’m not bothering you.”

“You’re a Serpent.”

“So us just existing is a crime now?”

He was distantly proud of that because it was what Sweet Pea and Toni might say. But not proud of himself for being proud. He needed to be smart right now, not puffed-up. 

“What are you — mad we beat your guy?” he said. “Buzz off.”

“Beat him?” she said. “Jughead?”

One blonde eyebrow went up.

She had something frightening inside her, Fangs decided. She switched so easy, so smooth, from despair right to fury. That eyebrow arch. Fangs felt two inches tall. 

“Jesus,” he said hurriedly. “No! Jones is one of us.”

She looked like she would contest that for a second, but didn’t. 

“I shouldn’t be talking to you—“

“I _know_ —“

“Because if the Black Hood finds out he could--could do something. So you have to tell Jughead I have to leave. I can’t tell him. It’s better that we not stay in contact—“

Two things happened. First, Fangs noticed that she was carrying a heavy backpack, like she really was planning to split town. Next, headlights fell on them, accusingly bright ones. A black car pulled up and a slick voice (a Bulldog, Fangs thought viciously, the kind that thought they could just eat Serpents) said, “Glad I took this route back from the hospital. What’s going on here, Betty?”

Fangs was a dead man, but not because of the Bulldog. Because of what they’d print in the paper. Fangs was, as a rule, not a gloomy guy and still some pocket of terrified rage opened up inside him. He reached for his back pocket, where his knife was. 

“Don’t move, snake!” hooted the Bulldog.

But before he could get out of his car Betty said, “It’s fine, Reggie. I’m a Serpent slut, remember?”

No trace of tears now. Her voice was even. Fangs regarded her and decided he really, _really_ didn't like her. He didn't like how she seemed all calculation and steel underneath her soggy sweet demeanor. That was the essence of the North Side. Inside every one of those houses was something worse than a snake. Inside every Bulldog and North Side girl it was probably the same.

"Hey, your bad taste in boyfriends doesn't mean you should get harassed," Reggie was saying now.

"It's _fine_ ," Betty said. She reached back and tightened her shiny blonde ponytail. 

Something occurred to Fangs.

Sometimes things just came to you in a flash. 

"I'm taking her to him," he told the Bulldog. Put a little hint of bravado into it. Curled hand around her skinny forearm and tried to ignore the shrieking voice in his head that was saying _south side snake assaults our baby, south side snake assaults our baby_ \--

He wasn't going to hurt her. She was the one turning those huge frightening kewpie doll eyes on him like she wanted to murder him with a look.

"Can't beat me down the way you beat down my boys. I'm just escorting the lady," Fangs offered, trying to keep his voice steady. 

The doll eyes now attacked Reggie. 

"Beat down your _boys_?" Betty said.

"It was you," Reggie said hurriedly. "It was you who attacked us. You. Serial killers!"

Then, like a coward, he was off with a shriek of tires.

"When did this happen?" said Betty Cooper, shifting with psychotic swiftness into interrogation mode. "After the town hall meeting? After he left me?"

Jones, she meant.

"Hey," Fangs said, holding up his hands again. "How should I know? I wasn't at your town hall. You and me both know South Siders would get booed out if we try to show up on your turf like that."

Though _he_ knew perfectly well Jones hadn't been at the fight. But she didn't know he knew that. Anyway, he was already thinking ahead. Twenty minutes ahead. It took twenty minutes to coax her into walking with him to Jones' trailer.

She and Jones -- they had a vulnerable, emotional, cinematic reconciliation. Jones' fingers tracing her tear tracks. Her huge green eyes dipping low for an instant, then flicking up. Like laser beams. Fangs shuddered a little.

"I have to tell you something," she said, voice heavy. "Things are -- things are different now, Juggie."

"Now?" Jones said. His own voice was heavy too, with despondent wonder. But then, to his credit, he snapped out of that momentarily and said, "I just saw you like two hours ago."

"I'll just be going," Fangs said loudly, not wanting to stick around. He saluted Betty Cooper. Even if he didn't like her, it would pay to stay on her good side for now. She nodded at him, then darted into the trailer.

"She was running away from town," Fangs told Jones under his breath, before departing. "Said something about the Black Hood. Thought you should know, brother."

Then, shaking his head, he departed. Slept at his boy Cowpoke's for the night, in case the sheriff tried to show up at his grandma's house to question him, and then caught up with Toni and Sweet Pea on the way to school the next day, down by the abandoned pork products warehouse.

"Guess who's in with Jones and in with the girlfriend," he said.

"We hate the girlfriend," Sweet Pea said, finishing off a piece of gas station beef jerky and chucking the wrapper at him. "Get with it."

"Who has time to get in with the girlfriend, honestly," said Toni, rolling her eyes. 

"I think," Fangs said. "She has a line with the Black Hood."

Sweet Pea looked impressed. Toni said, shaking her head, "God, don't worship that psycho, Sweet Pea. I bet it's her dad or something. White male in his 40s who just wants to protect Country Club Barbie."

"I think," Fangs said, considering it, "she might be a little scarier than Barbie."

But the other two were already walking on ahead, Sweet Pea sauntering backwards so he could better chuck his wrappers at Fangs.


	3. Chapter 3

In a begrudging way, Sweet Pea had to admit that Jughead Jones definitely broke all the rules. And he didn't break them in the normal way. 

Now, the Serpents, they had two main modes when it came to rule-breaking. Tough mode and smart mode. Tough mode -- that was like the time they'd put his brother in that residential school for headcases and then tried to give Shrub pills, and Shrub had pretended to take the pills until he got in good enough with the main orderly. He'd brained the guy on the head and tried to run away. Then the case worker had brought in Sweet Pea to calm him down. Sweet Pea had been in smart mode. He'd said, "Don't be an asshole. So they wanna give you pills. Get them to give you _all_ the pills. You know what we can on the street for those?"

That was how a Serpent might break the rules. But Jughead Jones broke even breaking the rules. He was too stupid to break the rules the right way. 

"Who's she?" Sweet Pea demanded, when an American Girl Doll dressed in the same oversized flannel shirt Jones had been wearing last week invited herself to their table. 

" _She_ is someone I would very much like to keep away from you, believe me," said Jones, sliding in next her and putting a protective arm around her. He didn't seem remotely perturbed by the fact that this made him sound like a dick. Sweet Pea's mouth fell open. 

"Easy," Toni said.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Sweet Pea said. "You still too good for us, Jones?"

"I'm exactly just as bad as you, and trust me, I know it. I don't you need you to hammer it home," Jones said, voice reedy and clipped. Sweet Pea could practically see the self-loathing written across his handsome face. It was appealing and insulting and Sweet Pea wanted to punch him.

"Juggie," said his girlfriend, in a warning tone. 

"Come to see how the dregs of the town live?" Toni asked her.

Jones' girlfriend put her delicate white hands on the grimy table and took in a deep breath.

"I came to apologize, Toni," she said, voice steely.

Toni's chin dipped in a question. Sweet Pea could tell that she was intrigued despite herself. The Serpents milling around the table all looked to her now, like this was shaping up to be her battle. 

"Black Hood Barbie," Fangs said, low, into the crook of his bicep.

Betty Cooper flinched, which made Jones puff up, which made Sweet Pea feel all kinds of conflicting emotions about what it would be like to provoke a fight and smack Jones' pretty face into the concrete and then maybe shove the girlfriend aside in order to be the one to tend to the wounds.

"The Hood's not a South Sider," Betty Cooper said. "You were right about that. Okay?"

Toni tipped her head to the side.

"Alright. What brings on this change of heart?"

"Fangs," Betty Cooper said.

Cowpoke and Smiley hooted. Fangs looked attacked. 

"The Black Hood was definitely at the town hall jubilee last month," Betty said. "And Fangs reminded me that nobody from the South Side, except for Jughead, was there. And the Hood -- he knows things about me. Personal things. No South Sider knows things like that."

More hoots, a compilation of hoots, but not from Toni, who was leaning forward because intensely dark things like this interested her, and not from Sweet Pea, who found himself mirroring Toni.

"Knows things?" Toni said. "What kind of things?"

"What I liked to read as a kid. Who I'm closest to. What I was taught was most sinful and evil and wrong."

Toni rapped her fingers fluidly on the table. 

"Dark," she said, interest settling on her like a cloak. Jones seemed to make up his mind about something.

"Look," he said. "This isn't just academic darkness, or movie darkness, okay? It's real darkness--"

" _You're_ lecturing _us_ on darkness?" Sweet Pea said, mostly just to see that soft, pretty face flush. 

"I want to ask the Serpents for something--" Betty Cooper began. But Jones was already shaking his head before she was done. So was everybody else. Toni leaned back.

"High and mighty," she said over her shoulder, an aside for all the jeering Serpents.

"Highest and mightiest," Sweet Pea echoed, finally taking this as his cue to rise. He walked with deliberate steps to Jones' side of the table. Jones' grip on his girlfriend tightened.

"I told you this was stupid," he muttered to her.

She said, eyes watery but mouth firm, "The Black Hood is threatening to hurt everyone I care about--" 

"So?" Sweet Pea said. He leaned on the table, looking down at her. "Your little ginger football captain hurt _us_ , and then went running to the hospital claiming we'd assaulted him--"

Both she and Jones looked shocked. Interesting. A glance at Toni confirmed that she thought it was interesting too.

"--and your vicious bitch of a mother wants to put us all in prison for breathing--"

"Language!" Jones said, standing up and looking several inches too short to be properly enraged.

"Sit down," Sweet Pea said, rolling his eyes. "What are you gonna do, hit me? We both know I'm the only thing keeping you from getting another Ghoulie beatdown--"

"What?" said Betty Cooper. She swiveled to Jones so fast that she almost hit Sweet Pea with her ponytail.

Jones looked caught-out. "It wasn't a motorcycle accident," he said, with some difficulty.

Betty Cooper looked like they'd be talking about that later, but after a second she, too, stood. Even though she was the shortest person standing, she stared at the rest or them determinedly.

"Look, whatever happened, some things are clear. I know and you all know that the Black Hood isn't a South Sider. But nobody else on the North Side knows that, so they're all blaming you. That isn't fair, and I think we should work together to send him a message."

"What message? 'Thanks for taking out the North Side?'" Sweet Pea said. Toni and the others snickered.

"No!" Betty Cooper said, ponytail flying again. "He's attacking North Siders now, but he doesn't like sin of any kind. You guys might not just be the scapegoats. You could be the next targets too--"

"Oh, so now the North Side cares about whether we get targeted," Toni muttered, running a hand through her hair.

"I'm _not_ the North Side, Toni," Betty Cooper said, sounding two seconds away from rage. "I'm just someone who needs to send him a message and wants to hire the Serpents to do it."

"To do your dirty work," Toni said.

"To show him," Betty Cooper said, "that I'm not some sweet, innocent, perfect girl next door. That he can't blame me or claim to follow me, or _control_ me. And I have an idea, too, for how to pay you. I can give you something you wouldn't get anywhere else."

Again they were back to hooting, but this time she'd definitely brought it on herself. Cowpoke said, "Shit, wouldn't Jones have a problem with that?"

Fangs leaned forward now, regarding Betty Cooper guilelessly.

"I think you could give us what we really want," he said. "I think you could." 

He looked at Jones. Toni and Sweet Pea looked at Jones, too.

"Yeah," Toni said, a small smile playing on her lips.

"Yeah," said Sweet Pea.

The second where Jones got it -- that second was glorious. He had an open, expressive face that showed his hurt easily. Not like his dad that way. Only like his dad in that he was fine and handsome and _theirs_.

"Right," Betty Cooper said, sitting down and rolling up her sleeves. "Good. I have an idea."

Jones sat down more slowly. Sweet Pea pushed off the table and went to him, put a hand on his shoulder. Leaned down to talk into the white shell of his ear, low, while his girlfriend explained her plan.

"Are we gonna get what we want?" he said.

Jones' long lashes brushed the hollows beneath his eyes. 

"Yeah," he said quietly. "You guys'll get what you want."


	4. Chapter 4

"If she's tricking us, you know what'll happen to you," Sweet Pea reminded Jughead that night, right before they had to report to the Cooper house.

It wasn't a trick. Betty's parents really were out for most of the night, at a mayoral task force convened to deal with the problem of the South Side. Archie and his father were out, too, at two separate meetings that also wanted to deal with the South Side -- in two completely separate ways. 

_The town fractured,_ Jughead thought. _Splintering ever-smaller, mistrust running deeper. Somehow the problem of the Black Hood had become the classic problem of the small town, of rich and poor, of haves and have-nots._

That would go in the novel. What wouldn't go in was what was left after he was done composing the sentence. Anger. Anger like the kind Sweet Pea and Toni and Fangs had, anger he shared with them.

But dread, too.

He didn't even know if he wanted to be a Serpent. But here he was with the jacket, sitting with the motorbikes and the others in the closest alley to Elm Street, waiting for nightfall.

Three of the others, to be specific. Sweet Pea, leader in Jughead's father's absence. Toni, because despite everything Jughead liked Toni. Fangs, because Betty inexplicably liked Fangs. Jughead regarded Fangs suspiciously for this. Fangs blinked at him.

"Gonna record everything on my cell phone," he said. "Peabody says the state is one-party consent, you know? Don't have to ask permission to record. So that way when your girl invites us in, if she tells people afterwards that we broke in--"

"She won't," Jughead snapped.

Fangs held up his hands.

"Hey, man, I just don't need another three-hour interrogation from the sheriff for some shit I didn't do," he said. "The first two times was enough."

"Ten to nine," Toni said, putting away her own phone. "Let's ride. Jones, you take lead. You know what castle your pretty princess lives in."

"Castle right next door to the castle we visited last night," Sweet Pea said, climbing on his bike. "If I get taken in, you know they'll try to pin the whole rumble on me."

"Anyone ever tell you guys you're paranoid?" Jughead said. He said it absentmindedly, though. He was trying to figure out how Sweet Pea had mapped out Betty's neighborhood, and why that made him almost as angry as the North Siders scapegoating the South Siders. He was trying start his bike, too, and trying to ignore how comfortable it was to be with people who were all snark and mistrust and motor oil. In the dark all the Serpents looked a little like his father. Except for him. He probably looked a lot like his father.

Betty was waiting in her doorway, framed in light. She'd changed out of the clothes she'd borrowed to blend in at South Side High. Pale blue jeans, pale green sweater, like a splash of spring in the dying autumn. Jughead took her in for a second, then climbed off his bike, pushed it to the bank of shadow beside the Cooper house. The others did the same. 

"Come on in, guys," Betty told them hurriedly. Fangs' teeth flashed happily in the dark. So did the glow from his phone. 

"Thanks, Betty," he said. "Do I take my shoes off?"

"No, Fangs, it's fine," Betty said.

Even without looking at Sweet Pea and Toni, Jughead could tell that they were grinning.

Then they were in the warm, well-lit Cooper household. In the light all the Serpents looked dirty and tired and too interested in their surroundings. Sweet Pea traced the smooth stair banister. Toni examined the photographs of Polly and Betty on the hall table, the same way generals examined enemy terrain. Fangs said, "Holy shit. A fireplace."

Jughead felt an uncomfortable sense of trespassing, and at the same time a wave of familiarity. He thought they must see it all the way he did: hungrily. He'd spent so long calling himself an observer that he'd forgotten _why_ he was better at observing than everyone else on the North Side. It was because he noticed things like their bright, clean kitchens, their well-stuffed bookshelves and wallpapered dining rooms. Hall closets full of expensive coats. Pictures of the occasional brisk ski trip. All the airy _space_ they had. In a trailer there wasn't space. Sometimes he'd wondered if maybe with just a little more space, it would have been easier to keep his mom from leaving.

He didn't totally want to be a Serpent. He didn't want to be a Serpent like this. But inside him there was a pit of all the warm banisters he'd never slid down, all the gardens he'd never played in, all the space he'd never had. And he wasn't resentful. But sometimes he was quietly furious that people who had all of that would still convene nightly meetings to wipe out all the cramped trailers that dared exist too close to them. 

"In here," Betty said. "Dining room."

She'd set out Alice Cooper's best china. Draped one of her mother's sweaters over a chair. The table was piled with food, even though Betty cooked at best perfunctorily, knowing she was good at it because she was expected to be good at it, the same way she was expected to be good at school, sports, ballet, ice skating, and sewing on wayward buttons. 

One of Alice's purses winked at them from the same chair that was wearing the sweater. Toni picked it up.

"It's an empty one I pulled from her closet," Betty said.

"Right," Toni said slowly. "Because I was totally going to try and steal the contents."

"Toni," Jughead said.

Toni put the purse down and made a face at him, then pulled out the chair nearest Alice's. Sweet Pea took the seat at the head of the table, playing true to trope. Fangs settled in front of a plate of roast chicken.

"Nice to hear you chiming in," Betty said, low, as he pulled out his phone.

"What?" Jughead said. "She's just messing with you. You can mess back. I always mess back."

Betty looked at him like he was on thin ice for some reason.

"Just take the pictures, Jug," she said. 

Toni held up a spoonful of creamed corn and pursed her lips at it. Sweet Pea hunched down on the table like he thought middle class dinners should be approached like councils of war. Fangs picked up a glass and waved it around with his pinky up. Betty went to join them. She sat between Sweet Pea and Fangs and somehow sent all the stress rushing out of her face. Instead, in an instant, she was warm and approachable, radiating the kind of impersonal happiness Alice Cooper always demanded of her daughters.

"Look natural," she told the Serpents. Then, to Jughead, "Take the pictures."

It took a little while to get the Serpents to look natural, but once they managed that it was easy to start composing a photo essay in his head. A more improbable story than the ones he usually told, one where Alice Cooper had invited in the people she routinely used to make her headlines. But everybody played along, especially Betty. She had this look she could direct just out of the frame, like her mother was standing right there, always looking over her and directing her. That was a good look for their purposes. Alice colluding with her targets, Alice helping create the bad kids who sold her her papers.

"Oh no, Alice," Toni told thin air. "I couldn't possibly _knife a baby_. I know that would make you delighted--"

"'Cause you're a hag," put in Sweet Pea, tackling the chicken with greasy fingers.

"A mean old bird, like the one you're serving us," said Fangs.

"A witch," Toni said.

Betty said, through a broad smile, "She's my mother. Not Satan."

"Sure. Satan plays nice when he has to," Toni said. "Fear isn't his only tool."

"I think we're good on the photographic proof," Jughead said hurriedly. "That's like twenty shots. If we want to strike back at Mrs. Cooper the next time she writes something, now we can."

Betty's smile quietly let itself out the back door.

"Okay," she said, taking a deep breath. "Now you guys can finish eating if you want, while we wait for his call--"

"You sure he'll call back?" Sweet Pea demanded, through a mouthful of chicken.

"He said he'd call back," Betty said. She played absently with the sleeve of her soft green sweater. "If he's not too busy murdering somebody, or--"

"Can I use your bathroom?" Toni said abruptly.

"Same," said Sweet Pea, standing up and striding out of the room while still holding a drumstick.

"Me too," said Fangs. Then he and Toni were out. Jughead stared after them, bewildered. Then he stared down at his frazzled girlfriend. He had a powerful urge to flee. Instead he pulled out the seat next to Betty. 

"I don't want to leave you in case he calls," he said. "Betty, I don't want you to deal with this alone." 

She put a hand on his hand and smiled at him hesitantly. Her real smile, not the smile her mother ordered out of her. Jughead felt a little like someone had tipped him into a clear mountain stream made of rainbows and cloudfluff. But principle had to win out.

"You should know, though," he said, ruining the moment, "that my merry band of outlaw friends might be casing the place."

The real smile also let itself out. Betty closed her eyes once, slowly, and then opened them again. 

"Great, so if Toni accuses me of profiling her--"

"I'll take Toni," he said. "And Sweet Pea."

"Right," Betty said. 

They stood and went to track down the Serpents. Sweet Pea, amazingly, really did seem to be using the bathroom. Toni plainly wasn't. She was upstairs in the Coopers' master bedroom, splayed out on the bed, rifling though a box.

"Just returning the purse," she said. "And, okay, also trying to figure out what makes the Wicked Witch of the North tick. And whether she owns any red shoes. And if water will melt her."

"Sometimes," Jughead said, "she's not completely terrible. Anyway, everything you think about her, try to think about Betty growing up with that."

Toni waggled a finger at him.

"Trying to get me to play nice with the girlfriend?" she said.

"You don't need to play mean with her, Toni. You guys want me. And now you have me." 

It rankled to admit it, but she did. They did. He was South Side now, through and through. He'd told Betty he belonged better there, so why did it bother him now that it was happening?

"So you say, but that's a quick turnaround from 'I'm a lone wolf, I'm not in a pack, I'm a snowflake school paper loner,''" Toni told him. "Anyway, don't worry. I'm not gonna steal Mama Coop's spellbooks or the virgins' blood she uses to keep herself young. Go keep an eye on your girlfriend. I'll be there in a mo."

It was a complete dismissal, but he would have been contrary and stuck around if it wasn't for Betty. He really didn't want to leave Betty alone to wait for the Black Hood's call.

As he made his way down the hall, the phone in the Cooper living room started ringing. 

Jughead found himself scrambling down the stairs, and could hear Toni pounding after him. In the living room, Sweet Pea was regarding the phone malevolently and Fangs was sitting cross-legged with his boots on the couch, biting his nails. Betty sat between them.

"Just pick it up," Sweet Pea told her. "It's gotta be you, anyway. If it's him or if it's not."

This was true, but Jughead didn't want her to pick it up. He found himself pacing, even though it made Toni look at him like he was out of his mind.

"Wait," he said. "Honestly, why put yourself through this--"

"Because she's getting threatened and if she backs off he'll know she's weak," Sweet Pea said, like he thought Jughead was stupid. 

"Betty isn't a South Side Serpent. Those rules don't apply to her," Jughead snapped.

"Right now, Jug," Betty said in a small voice, "they actually kind of do."

With one swift motion, she picked up the phone. She didn't put it on speaker, but she didn't need to. The distorted voice of the Black Hood was loud enough that they could all hear it clearly.

"I told you I didn't like sharing you with people. Much less that criminal and the crooked, sinful degenerates he belongs with. They aren't good enough to lick the bottom of your shoe--"

"What a dick," Fangs whispered.

"A few days ago you guys were praising him!" Jughead hissed back.

"That was before we knew he was a dick," whispered Fangs.

Betty was so frozen she didn't seem to notice the whispering. Jughead shoved Fangs aside just to put a hand on her shoulder, just to touch her, to try and tell her this wasn't real. But it was. The Black Hood was still warbling, his voice so commanding that it filled the room.

"--he isn't fit to touch you. Every hand he puts on you is one I will cut off. And for every kiss you share, one of the shameless hussies or violence-loving delinquents you laugh and parade yourself in front of will be struck down. We will begin with the worst of them. The cancer that poisoned your own home. You thought you could send her to that sunny beginning you used to share, back in the summer of illness. But I've found her. She will pay for your disobedience."

The line went dead. The Serpents all stared at the phone like something incredible was happening on a movie screen right before their eyes. Jughead felt like hitting them, even though he never felt like hitting anybody. A lifetime of observing every minor pain Riverdale had ever suffered felt sunk uncomfortably in his bones. Just observing, just like this. Rarely intervening. But Betty needed intervention, she needed _help_. 

"Stop looking like that! It's not a show for your amusement!" he snapped. "We need to figure out what he's talking about--"

"I was really sick once when I was five, and Polly helped nurse me," Betty said, in a small voice. "We were on vacation. We'd gone to this -- this dude ranch. This farm."

She was attacking the redial button with nervous hands then, not even waiting for anyone to pick up before she was sobbing, "Please don't hurt her. _Please_ \--"

No one on the other end. Just a blank announcement that the number was disconnected. The Serpents stared, rapt and horrified. Jughead wanted to do something, but he had no idea what, and enraged alarms were going off in his head. Distantly, he wondered if this was what Archie felt like all the time.

"The farm," he said, breathing hard. "The farm?"

Betty slammed the phone down.

"We have to go to the farm," she said. "We have to stop him, and find Polly before he hurts her, and I have to apologize somehow so he doesn't--"

"We're going to a farm?" Fangs asked the room.

"We're going to a farm," Jughead said, in a tone he hoped brooked no argument.

"Fine, we'll go to the farm," Toni said. "But you--" here she leveled a finger at Betty, "--you are not apologizing to the Phantom of the frickin' Opera. None of us is apologizing to that John Norman Collins prick."


	5. Chapter 5

Because Toni liked Jughead and didn't want to see his pretty little limbs hacked into lots of pieces tonight, she offered to let Betty ride with her for the time being.

"I thought you hated me," Betty said, point-blank.

"I find you annoying," Toni clarified. She really did, though she was in the process of reassessing some things about Betty, based on their visit to the Wicked Witch's house.

"Anyway," Toni added, "it doesn't matter. Since a not-quite-serial killer is making you his Beatrice, let's keep loverboy's hands away from you while we figure out how to make Richard Speck back off for two seconds."

"Do serial killers back off?" Sweet Pea demanded. He'd climbed on his bike and was eyeballing the group in the moonlight, like something didn't sit well with him.

"If you mean," Toni said, turning to him, "have we just drawn his attention to the Serpents and the South Side so that this relentless psychopath will start targeting _us_ \--"

"Yeah, that's what I mean," Sweet Pea said, like she was dumb.

"You can't glorify him like that," Jughead said. He was sitting on his own bike with his head in his hands, so his voice came out muffled. "That's what he wants, because he's a narcissist."

"Almost like a Ghoulie," Toni explained. "You have to keep an eye on them. So you do. But you don't ever give them public attention, because it makes them feel big. You can't ever let on that they bother you--"

"He does bother me!" Betty Cooper said, whirling on her with her firm good-girl voice set as high as it was probably allowed to go. "He's going to kill my sister!"

"Not if we get there first, so get on my bike," Toni said.

"Not gonna get there at all until I know we're not messing things up for the South Side," Sweet Pea said dangerously.

Something occurred to Toni. It was something both intellectually satisfying and deeply unpleasant -- enraging even -- like that time she'd told South Side High admin that the bathrooms were flooding into the west hall lockers and they'd demanded proof, and so she opened up the nearest one and out had come several dozen wet silverfish. 

"No," she said now, to Sweet Pea. "No. He's a grandstander. Like I said, he wants attention, but attention from people like Betty. North Side people. He's not going to kill on the South Side -- of course not --"

"People on the South Side die all the time," Sweet Pea said, nodding. "But that's not how you get the North Side to pay attention, because when we die _they_ don't even notice." He jerked his chin at Betty Cooper.

"Andy Pellegrino died last week," Fangs noted, by way of example. "I think it was his dad. Cops said his dad was real behind on child support."

Betty Cooper looked shocked. So did Jughead. Toni's fondness for him warred with a intense desire to smack him on the head until he internalized what side he was on. Sweet Pea looked like he was wrestling with the same emotions.

"Are both both members of the serial killer fanclub in agreement about this creepy psycho's profile?" he asked.

"What?" Jughead said. "Yes! Yes, okay! Let's go! We have to help Betty's sister!"

So they set out, with Betty Cooper's long arms wound around Toni's back and Betty's voice -- okay, surprisingly deep and sexy for a North Side good girl -- shouting directions into Toni's ear. 

One thing about Betty Cooper that even Toni had to admit was that Betty Cooper was fully as pretty as her boyfriend. And actually if the North Side were not, as a rule, overprivileged 1-percenter republican trash, Toni would have tried lining up for a North Side girlfriend like this. Maybe a less obnoxiously self-righteous one. But, okay, maybe Toni regretted, slightly, that her opening gambit to Betty hadn't been, "From one ten to another, congrats on bagging this weedy eight-point-five."

Not that afterwards she wouldn't have called Betty out if necessary. But it would have set the tone better.

Whatever, they didn't need to like each other. They just needed to work together well enough to get to this farm, several highways and backroads away. It took forty nerve-wracking minutes to get there, only to find a large farmhouse bracketed by moonlight-tinged nature and several dopey-looking cows.

"Holy shit, real cows," Fangs said, when he got off his bike. Betty and Jughead were already rushing to the front door and pounding frantically on it. A sweet-looking old lady eventually answered and exchanged several terse words with them. Toni hung back with the other Serpents.

"So, like, _why_ is the sister on a farm?" Fangs said, after a few seconds.

"Joined a cult," Toni said immediately.

"Probably some yoga retreat shit," said Sweet Pea, shaking his head.

"Or maybe," Fangs offered, staring at the cows, "she just likes cows."

But now all the lights were coming on in the farmhouse and more people were joining the old lady on the porch. They all looked frantic. Jughead turned and looked at the Serpents like he expected them to fix things.

"God, what is his fucking problem?" Sweet Pea said, apropos of nothing. "What does he want, an engagement ring?"

"Do _you_ want that?" Toni asked.

Sometimes it was hard to tell. Sweet Pea stared down at her, disgruntled.

Jughead and Betty were crossing to them now, though, with a gang of tired old hippie-looking farm workers at their heels.

"She's missing," Jughead said in a clipped voice. "Polly's not in her bed, and her window is open and there's a ladder there. No one knows where he might have taken her. We have to form a search party. We have to find her."

"Two groups," Betty shouted to all the assembled people. "One to fan out to the West. One to fan out to East. This is how we did it when we were looking for Polly last month."

"Why were you looking for Polly last month?" Toni asked.

"Did she not tell you she was leaving for the farm?" Sweet Pea said

"This isn't time to joke around," Jughead said, warning in his voice. More warning than he was capable of following through on, but warning all the same.

The Serpents stared at him. He'd joked his way through every spontaneous cafeteria fight that had erupted at South Side High since he'd started there, to the point where Philips had started suggesting that he be psychologically evaluated for some kind of emotional disturbance.

Which was sort of how they knew he'd fit in with them eventually.

Betty was still speaking. "Alright, I'm taking group A to the west. Juggie will take group B to the east. Who's with me?"

Jughead looked momentarily annoyed at being split off from her, but then said, "Toni. Go with her, okay? I trust you."

"What?" Toni said.

He was an endearing dweeb, but this was taking the dweebery a little too far.

"Actually, you know what?" Jughead said, grimacing in that brittle way of his. "All of you go with her. All of you look after her. Or else I will deliver _myself_ to the Ghoulies, and then you'll all look pathetic for letting the son of FP Jones go down."

With that he stomped off dramatically, farm workers closing in behind him. Sweet Pea swore.

"Let's just do it," Toni said, rolling her eyes. "At least he's learning how to play the game. A little. Finally."

But it wasn't fun, combing cow-shit fields in the dark next to a frantic Betty Cooper. Especially since Sweet Pea and Fangs seemed to be having even less fun than she was and hung back behind the group, both to be the muscle and as a form of silent protest. That left her to be the one sticking close to Betty.

In the dark, Toni's thoughts turned to a more interesting topic than the missing sister.

"So," she said. "This Black Hood guy. He knows about your childhood vacations. He knows what you liked to read as a kid. Do you have, like, an angry and egotistical big brother?"

Betty Cooper leveled her with an _are you fucking serious?_ look.

"I don't have to tell you about my family, Toni," she said.

"Okay, so you do have a big brother, but there are issues there," Toni said. "Noted. Moving onto dear old dad. Gonna take a wild guess and assume he's a white guy in his forties, just like our killer probably is--"

" _What_ is your problem with me?" Betty Cooper snapped. "Is it Jughead? Do you want my boyfriend or something? Are you mad that he's with a North Sider, so you act like a horrible little monster--"

"That's not gonna insult me," Toni told her coolly, aiming the flashlight the farm workers had given her at a nearby hay bale and finding it clotted with what looked like more cow shit. Some of the workers and Fangs started poking it anyway, to make sure there weren't any Barbie bodies in it. Toni continued. "As one of my favorite directors once said, 'Some people find Jesus. I found Frankenstein. The reason I'm alive and sane is--'"

"'Because of monsters,'" Betty Cooper said. "Yeah, no, I know Guillermo del Toro too, Toni, thanks. You didn't answer my question."

Toni had an unsatisfying feeling shudder through her, like the time she'd told South Side High admin that girls kept being assaulted in the section of North corridor where the lights were broken, but then no girls had wanted to come forward to confirm it.

"I..." she said, after a few seconds. "I didn't think you'd know Guillermo del Toro."

"I'm Jughead's girlfriend," Betty snapped. "If he likes something, I listen to him about it. Like he does for me."

Toni's need to stir shit rose like a great wave inside her, probably because she was standing out here in the dark looking at all this cow shit. 

"But," she said, "he is still totally lying to you about everything connected with the Serpents."

Betty stopped. She shone her flashlight in Toni's face. It was very rude. It was slightly hot. Behind Toni, Fangs and Sweet Pea started making surprised and vaguely belligerent noises. Toni waved them down. It was better not to do that in front of Betty's gang of farm hippies, probably.

"He is," Betty said. "But guess what? I still love him, and he still loves me, and we will work it out. And we don't need your help to do that. And I _don't_ want you trying to sink your claws in him. And I'm going to look for my sister now!"

She stomped off. Toni stared after her.

"She just had to assume I was a home-wrecker," she muttered, because she'd been starting to like Betty. So much for that.

"Are you not?" Sweet Pea said.

"I'm not you. I can wait until they break up," Toni said.

For him. Or her. This was shaping up to be a very strange night, and possibly not because of the farm or the not-technically-a-serial killer.

Now, though they heard shouts from the other side of the fields. 

"We found her!" Jughead was yelling. "She's alive!"

"Oh, she's in the munitions store," said one of the farm workers.

"In the what?" said Sweet Pea. 

"Where we keep our guns," said the farm worker.

"Why does _everyone_ have a gun?" Sweet Pea demanded.

Farmhouse Gun Barbie was in fact sitting in the munitions store, hidden partially behind another box of guns. The farm was not full of hippies. It was full of militants.

"I came here so I could be safe, Betty," Polly told her sister slowly. 

"I knew it. I knew her family were second amendment truther republicans," Toni said, backing out of the munitions store. She backed into a very overdressed redhead, who waved at her like she was a fly that had just committed a battery. Toni waved back. The redhead looked both annoyed and intrigued.

"I also called Cheryl," Polly said now, coming out from behind the gun box.

"And you came?" Betty said, staring at the redhead. 

"Of course I came. I couldn't let anything happen to Polly. You're a stone-cold bitch who would kill me if I ignored Polly's calls."

"I wouldn't _kill_ you, Cheryl!"

"You blackmailed me into testifying for FP Jones!"

"What?" said Toni.

"What?" said Sweet Pea and Fangs. 

Also, Toni had to look back at Betty's sister for a second.

"Okay," she said. "Your sister is apparently teen pregnant. So was one of my friends, actually, last year. So if she needs to, like, talk about the hurdles of teen motherhood, I know a person. Also--"

"You blackmailed her for FP?" Sweet Pea put in.

"No!" Betty said, looking guilty.

"Yes," snapped Cheryl.

"Oh, it's fine if she did," Toni said. "It's just. Like. When she came to ask for our help, she really should have led with that."


	6. Chapter 6

Later, they gathered around the table in the center of the farmhouse dining room, all except for the farmhands, who'd retired for bed.

"He came into my bedroom," Polly said. "Looking for me. Like I _knew_ he would. Of course, I'd warned the farm he would come, but I knew I might not be able to rely on them. So I hid behind my changing screen and when he went into my bathroom, I dashed into Brother Malcolm's room across the hall--"

"Guys, my cult guess was right," Toni was whispering. She was whispering it loudly. She apparently still lived to antagonize Betty. Betty closed her eyes. Polly kept talking.

"--and then I climbed down the back stair behind the back corridor and made for the munitions store, and when I got there I called you, but you didn't answer, so I called Cheryl--"

"Hi," Cheryl said unnecessarily. She appeared to be in a good mood because Toni had called her 'vicious ginger Linda Evangelista.' 

"Thanks for coming for her," Betty said. She felt a flicker of affection for Cheryl even though Cheryl was Cheryl. Despite the horrors of the night and the horrors of her life, Polly was safe. Jughead's new friends were only moderately terrible. And Jughead was with her, eating his way through all the food the farmhands had provided, with his hand locked in hers despite the threats the Black Hood had made against him. 

"Right, you're welcome, who cares," Cheryl said. "What I want to know is why Betty Cooper is openly consorting with a bunch of the chiseled, vile delinquents that have been terrorizing our town and that her own mother wants to see locked away. What's with that, Betty? Vulnerable to the sordid attractiveness of their hooligan evil?"

The Serpents stared at her, like they couldn't figure out whether she was complimenting them or not. Betty could tell them that she definitely wasn't, but she figured that would be more trouble than it was worth.

"And also Jughead's here," Cheryl allowed.

Jughead stopped eating long enough to give her a black look. Betty patted his hand with one of her hands.

"Okay," Toni said now. "So. To recap. You are secretly more badass than we thought, your sister is a sensible crazy, your friend Cheryl is mean and hot--"

"Thank you, Avril Lafiend," Cheryl put in. "I take that as a compliment, except for the Betty’s friend part.”

"Fair,” Toni said, then turned her attention back to Betty. "What are you going to do about the serial killer? Because he's still out there."

"She needs to stay here with me!" said Polly. "Where she's safe. Everyone is going to start carrying their guns now, even me, so that if anyone tries to come onto our land we can shoot them on the spot--"

"Oh my god," Toni said, visibly gagging a little. 

"Shut up, Toni," Betty told her. "You’re in a gang. Polly, I'm not staying here. That would just draw the Black Hood here, to me. And you'd be in even more danger, guns or not, which is not what I want. I need to find a way to get his attention off of me."

"You're the Grace Kelly to his Alfred Hitchcock," Jughead put in. "Or, no. Not the Grace Kelly. The Tippi Hedren. That's--that's so much worse."

"Exactly," said Betty. That was what was so horrifying. _That_. She was the thing he'd fixated on, to the point where he'd tried to get her to abandon her friends, to the point where he could hurt her and delight in it. And he knew things about her. Old things, things nobody should know. Toni's taunts about brothers and fathers danced through her head, and now she found herself shaking free of Jug so that she could dig her nails into her knees. Jughead's hands closed around her's, stopping her. Betty looked up at him.

It did seem, in moments like these, faintly ludicrous to think that she could lose him.

She didn't want to lose him.

"What do we do?" Jughead asked the group.

"We?" Sweet Pea said.

"Betty helped my dad," Jughead said, voice hard. "She wrote articles about his innocence in the school paper, she got called a Serpent Slut for it--"

"Hey, we’ve all been called that," said Toni, shrugging.

"And we've never read her school paper," Sweet Pea said. "We never even read our school paper."

"She gave you what you wanted!" Jughead snapped.

"Did she?" Sweet Pea said.

"Yeah," Betty retorted. "Pretty sure I did. I don't just sell my mother out for nothing."

"This night," Cheryl whispered to a shocked Polly, "is incredible."

Betty ignored her. For some reason, Jughead was having a -- a moment with the Serpents. That was what it was. Something heavy and significant was passing between them.

"You're getting what you want," he said. "So help her. _Please_."

“We will,” Toni said. “We’ll give her some advice.”

“Advice?” Jughead said, outraged. 

“Hey, you said it. The Black Hood targets people who are close with the North Siders, to get the attention of the North Siders,” Sweet Pea said. “Your girlfriend is queen North Side. So we can’t get too cozy with her. We helped her tonight, but there’s a line after tonight. There’s always a line.”

“But,” Toni put in, “I hate to admit this in front of B-Coop, but I’m gonna say it anyway: maybe some North Siders have a little South Side in them—“

“Gross,” Cheryl noted. 

“—and your girlfriend needs to access her South Side. Someone’s decided to shove her around. She has to figure out how to shove back.”

“How?” Betty demanded. “I’m helpless right now, Toni. If I don’t do what he says, he goes after people. If I do what he says, he goes after people anyway—“

“You’re not helpless,” Fangs put in, looking confused. “You’re the kind of kid people think is perfect for some reason. That's like a superpower. You can do bad things to people and get away with it. If you told people we’d forced you out here tonight, even though it would be a lie, we’d get in trouble. Just like we’re gonna get in trouble for a fight you guys started.”

Betty blinked at him. She didn’t understand his last sentence all that well yet (though she made a mental note to figure out whatever was happening with Archie), but her confusion was overshadowed by other emotions. An odd kind of relief at the thought that some people, somewhere, looked at her and saw nothing truly Alice Cooper-perfect. And an uglier, heavier feeling. 

“So what do I do — do I scapegoat somebody? That’s the North Side’s power, right?”

“You’re being scapegoated,” Jughead muttered. 

The Serpents scoffed. So did Cheryl. 

“I’m serious,” he snapped. “He knows the North Side will go crazy if he targets Betty, because Betty is our — their — no, _our_ Betty. The good girl. This is another way to both draw attention to himself by going after somebody everybody would miss—“

“Not quite everybody,” Cheryl murmured. 

Both this and Jughead's comments only made her feel worse, feel like there was no way she could win here. But Jughead kept talking. 

“And make it seem like somehow it’s her fault for not living up to his ridiculous standards! It’s abusive!”

“And sometimes you have to stick it to your abusers,” Toni said slowly, like Jughead was only just catching up to something that had been evident to the rest of them for a while. 

“Stick it how?” Betty demanded. 

“Play their sick game right back,” Cheryl suggested. The Serpents nodded. 

“Like if somebody pulls a gun at a knife fight,” Sweet Pea said. “You back off like he wants. You back off until you can find his address.”

“And beat him down, like he's clearly asking for,” said Fangs. 

“And call him on every sick, immoral thing he’s done, so start thinking about who might know your secrets, so you can find out his in return,” said Toni. 

“So — what?” Betty said. “So I play along. I call him and I apologize?”

Toni made a face. 

“Ugh. No. Don’t apologize. Don’t give that prick the satisfaction. Just tell him that you’re not gonna ditch your friends, and let him feed you the sick clues he’s clearly dying to feed you and have you figure out.”

"That's a dangerous game," Jughead retorted. "One Betty shouldn't have to play."

One Betty didn't _want_ to play. But Toni still regarded their side of the table almost indulgently.

"Life's unfair, snowflake. I know that and you know that. Anyway, it's what she has to do. You know I'm right. He's already feeding her info about himself. He knows where she went on vacation as a kid. Who knows that? Dad? Dad's old creepy golf buddy? The list can't be that long. And every time she gets a new piece of info, she crosses somebody off the list."

Betty closed her eyes. She hadn't even wanted to make the list. Jughead's hand tightened on her hand.

"You're all helping her," Jughead declared. "You're doing it behind closed doors if you want, but you're helping her figure out who this is. Because _I'm_ helping her. And because there's no point to this -- this gang you guys have -- unless you can use it to strike against something as bad at this."

"Delighted to help our once and future Jughead," Toni said wryly, running her fingers through her wild hair. 

"Behind closed doors," said Sweet Pea, with finality. "Only through you, and it's gonna be enough of a pain making sure he doesn't chop you up. But there's a line. There's always a line."

"I--" Polly put in, sounding shaken, "I really have to get to bed, and I'm not sure all this excitement is good for the babies, and I'm not sure I like any of this, but..." She reached for Betty's shoulders and looked into her sister's eyes. "--but I trust you, Betty. And you will pull through this."

One kiss and embrace later, and she was gone. Cheryl got up to follow her.

"I can't believe Betty Cooper has a gang and Archie Andrews has a gang. I always thought I'd be the first one to have a gang," she said, because she couldn't leave a room without causing drama. Toni stared after her almost admiringly. Soulmates or something. Betty shuddered a little.

"Okay," she said, when she found her voice. "Okay. I guess this is what I have to do."

"I don't like this," Jughead said immediately.

Betty stared at him. "I don't like _you_ joining a gang," she said. It came out heavy, harsh, and as formlessly unforgiving as she felt right now. "We do what we have to do, Juggie."

For some reason, the Serpents laughed at that. Jughead looked a little betrayed, though it was unclear who he felt had betrayed him. The gang ignored him, rising with a clatter of plates and jacket buckles.

"You guys kind of seem like you need to work out some stuff," Toni said, with an exaggerated shake of her head. "So, you know what? We'll wait outside. Thirty minutes, Jonesy."

"He'll take all the time he needs," Betty found herself retorting. 

But they were already sauntering out. 

This left her with Jughead. His long, warm fingers on her fingers, Betty's formless despair echoed in the delicate lines of his face. For one second, it really hit Betty how handsome he was, how darkly suited he was to all this black leather and nighttime sniping, and it made her sick. She didn't want any of this to suit him. He was Jughead Jones, sole member of the school Film Club, still stuffing his face with rye bread and vegetables even though he'd complained bitterly to his fellow Serpents about the farmhands only serving cauliflower by-products. Because he wasn't supposed to be in a gang. He was supposed to be odd and harmless, hungry and kind.

Jughead put his bread down.

"Sorry," he said, after a second, like he was trying to figure something out. "I didn't eat before. At your house. I think I was too worried about you. It feels deeply uncharacteristic and like a total betrayal of my brand, plus I'm starving--"

"Your appetite increases tenfold in times of stress," Betty said. "That's you. It's okay--"

"Is it?" he asked, stretching the question out. "I don't want to fail you, Betty--"

"So just be you," Betty said. "You, but without the lying and the -- the weird moments you have with the Serpents. You didn't even tell me you got in some kind of fight--"

"I got beaten up," Jughead said, somehow making it sound like a vast joke instead of something horrifying. "No fight. I can still barely throw a punch, and this time I was just taking them. I just -- I don't know. I didn't want to make it a thing. I haven't ever been the kind of person people want to see you with. It's bad enough that everybody knows I belong on skid row. I don't need you to know that I don't even fit in _there_ \--"

"Nobody should have to fit in there," Betty said, because it was true. "And you're still the best of Riverdale, Juggie. I believe that--"

It made her so _angry_ that the Black Hood was poisoning that.

"Most people would say that's you," Jughead said. For a second, his eyes were bright. Betty felt an urge to kiss him, so she did, one hand cupping his jaw, the other clutching the lapel of his jacket. He felt warm. She didn't want to lose him to a gang. She found herself saying this into his mouth, crying a little.

"I don't want to lose you because you become the darkest-timeline version of a Thomas Harris heroine," Jughead said, with his eyes just as wet as hers. "I want to be your -- your port in a storm. But I'm not good at it. I'm not meant to be the guy who swoops in and fixes things. I watch and I record and I'm dark and judgmental and weird--"

"So be my dark and judgmental and weird port," Betty said. "Okay?"

Jughead nodded. She pulled him in for another kiss. It wouldn't fix anything for either of them, but it was a reprieve for now.

"I'm gonna be a Serpent," he told her. "I'm sorry. But honestly? Probably not sorry enough. Not as sorry as you deserve--"

That word again, such a favorite of the Black Hood. Irritation sang through her. She smacked his shoulder lightly.

"Don't think about _deserve_ ," she instructed. "Think about what I _need_."

She pulled back his stupid leather jacket, danced her fingers up beneath his t-shirt. Distantly, she wondered if Cheryl or Polly or a farmhand or a Serpent might walk in. She decided she didn't care. There was so much out there that might interrupt or destroy what they had. But she didn't care.

They took a lot more than thirty minutes.


	7. Chapter 7

Dawn broke slowly over the farm, the pinkish light revealing that they'd gone all the way to Sugarloaf Mountain in their haste to outsmart the Black Hood. So now the Serpents stared down at the picturesque valley below.

Riverdale from above. The North Side was a picture of magnificent old houses and trees dressed in autumn splendor. The South Side was mostly smoke stacks and big formless brown stretches, trailer parks and the scars of the railroad tracks.

"What do they even think they're gonna get if they wipe us out?" Sweet Pea said. "The creek? They want our creek? Because they've been dumping toxic chemicals in it for like sixty years. They can have it. We don't even want it."

"We'll give it to them," Toni agreed, "in little buckets."

"Or bottle it up for the red psycho," said Sweet Pea.

"He can drink it before football practice," Toni said. "Maybe it'll give him mutant powers."

"Seriously, though," Sweet Pea said. "What'll they even get for the shit they want to do to us now?"

"They get the satisfaction," Toni said, "of feeling like they're just a little bit safer, mostly because they did something to us."

They shared a dark look. Gloomy. Self-righteous. But not unwarranted.

Fangs, meanwhile, was ignoring the view and studiously ignoring what was happening just inside the farm house, in the dining room, and looking instead for cows. But the cows had wandered away. He gave up.

"So does Jones not think this is gonna blow up in his face?" he said, after a minute. "Dating a girl like that? And, I mean, does she not even care that people, like, _eat_ at that table?"

"I find this very strange," Toni noted, "but I'm rooting for them. It'll never work. But I like the weird despondent feeling they give me."

Also, her sister had made it out to state college, and Betty Cooper's sister was teen pregnant, and sometimes you had to sit back and admire life's odd ironic flourishes.

"Yeah, that's not my thing," Sweet Pea said dismissively. "When we actually mess with her mom, you'll see how fast she turns. North Siders look out for North Siders."

"Oooh," Toni said. "About that."

Jughead had the pictures from the fake dinner. But she didn't think they would need those. She'd found something better, in a box at the back of the Wicked Witch's closet. She produced it for the team. Fangs stared at it, then craned his head to compare the image to the one in the farmhouse window, then jerked back from _that_ image like he'd forgotten what was happening in there.

"Is that--"

"Forsythe Pendleton Jones the Second," Toni said.

The boys goggled at her.

"Oh, did you not know what FP stood for?" Toni said. "Come on. With names like that, the Joneses started out on the North Side. They matter -- _he_ matters -- because when the North Side failed them, _we_ took them in."

Peabody had been clear about that. About what it meant, what it could mean, if you could twist the story far enough to see bright goodness in the South Side, bitter cruelty in the North. Toni wasn't sure you even needed much twisting. It was all there. Jughead Jones could be their living proof of that.

She liked him a lot. She also liked what he'd have to stand for.

Now Sweet Pea tapped the second person in the picture.

"She's a traitor," he said. His posture was stiff, his face stretched into a snarl. "That's what this is all about. She's a _traitor_ \--"

"I don't know," Toni said, taking a good hard look at young Alice Cooper. The gang jacket, the motorcycle boots, the snake tattoo on her bare belly. It seemed so obvious, in retrospect. Alice Cooper worked the way a Serpent did. She just got enough people to say things, so many people that those things started to sound true, and then she reveled in the chaos. But she did this, Toni thought, without being honest about how she was doing it. She stirred shit and then acted like she hadn't.

As one gang ten recognizing another gang ten, Toni wanted to see her go _down_.

"I mean, yeah, a traitor," she said now, to the boys. "And, big surprise, all her shit is internalized self-loathing. But I think this is a good development. There's a lot we could do with this, if we timed it right. And B-Coop wouldn't even blame us if we did it right. She'd blame her lying mother."

Sweet Pea clamped his mouth shut, like he was trying to suppress something dark even for him. 

"South Side in her," Fangs said. "In Jones' girlfriend. South Side rising."

"We can hope," said Toni. "We'll get it out of one of them, for sure."

"Good work tonight," Sweet Pea decided, picking something glittering out of all his rage. "We got information. We got Jones to say he was in. We have some little North Siders ready to say we don't break bread with the Black Hood--"

"We saw a real fireplace and some cows," Fangs put in. "And you said it wouldn't be all fun and games to be a Serpent."

"Well, we didn't want to give Jones the wrong impression," said Sweet Pea. "That's what he'll get out of me: truth. Honesty. That's it. That's my line."

"Plus a dash of a paranoia," Toni noted. "Which I think he likes. Paranoia's an act of good citizenship, you know."

"Sometimes," Fangs said, "I have no idea what we're talking about."

"You say that, but you're smarter than you think, despite the six Fs on your report card," Toni said. "After all, you got in good with the girlfriend."

Sweet Pea nodded. "That'll make time-sharing Jones a little easier, until we get him for keeps."

"Aw, come on. Are they not even the littlest bit cute?" Toni said. "Like, I don't know, a human yin-yang symbol?"

"Cuter separate," said Sweet Pea.

Despite this, no one moved to interrupt Jones. He stumbled out when the roosters were crowing, pulling his beanie on as he opened the door.

"Betty's going to get a ride with Cheryl," he said. "This is weird to say, but Cheryl might be the only person besides us who's just too evil to play by the rules of the Black Hood."

"Evil?" Toni said, raising an eyebrow. "Come on. South Siders aren't evil, Officer Krupke. We're just depraved on account of we're deprived."

"Speak for yourself," Sweet Pea said, heading for his bike. "I'm antisocial and anti-work. I'm a bastard."

Jones hesitated before climbing on his own bike.

"You guys _will_ help Betty and her friends crack anything the Black Hood throws at her?"

"I do love cryptograms and learning more about Betty," Toni said, nodding.

"Anything that gets the South Side rising," said Fangs. "Or that doesn't, like, hurt us. I'm fine with."

"I'm tired of having this conversation," Sweet Pea noted. "I said I would, so I will. You said you're with us, so you are. No take-backs."

"I was always gonna be in," Jughead said, something thoughtful and sad in his tone.

"Great," said Toni. "Now let's go do nefarious things. Throw rocks at the quarry. Practice our knife jabs. Lurk in dark alleys, waiting to destroy our enemies."

"I'm not going to hurt another human being," Jughead told them all, a little pompously, as he climbed on his bike.

"Who said human beings?" Sweet Pea said. "There's an alley by the Shop Rite that's just full of old cauliflower."

Jones cracked a smile.

 _Charming_ , Toni mouthed at Sweet Pea.

Sweet Pea nodded, like he knew. Fangs whooped as he started his bike.

"South Side for life!" he shouted, even though it made both Toni and Jughead grimace, for different reasons.

Nobody corrected him, though. 

There was a lot of bad you could pile on the South Side. But it was like them, like Jughead Jones, like B-Coop, maybe. You couldn't keep it down permanently.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written very hastily while listening to [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5Pag_iQ170).


End file.
